Medtronic and Insulet Agree to Sheath Their Swords in Battle Over Insulin Pumps

Last September, Medtronic's Diabetes division sued Insulet alleging that the company through its OmniPod Insulin Management System willfully infringed on two of Medtronic's patents related to wireless insulin pump technology.

A year later, the two companies have settled out of court. In a news release Wednesday, Insulet announced that it would make a one-time cash payment to Medtronic of $10 million and agree to cross-license certain patent claims to settle the lawsuit.

But most importantly, the two companies have agreed not to sue each other in the future over "patent infringement based on any existing product, or any feature, element or component in any currently existing commercially available products."

We are satisfied to have settled this patent infringement lawsuit with Medtronic," said Duane DeSisto, President and Chief
Executive Officer of Insulet, in the news release. "This agreement allows us to maintain our focus on the launch of the new OmniPod, which continues to receive an enthusiastic response from both customers and healthcare professionals. In addition, the agreement provides us significant freedom to continue developing the products in our pipeline, including an OmniPod System for the type 2 diabetes market and an OmniPod with integrated continuous glucose monitoring."

A Medtronic spokesman did not provide a response to the settlement other than what is already in Insulet's press release.

Aside from Insulet, Medtronic competes with Johnson & Johnson, DexCom, Insulet, Roche and Tandem Diabetes Care in the insulin pump market. Worldwide, the insulin pump market is expected to grow to $1.2 billion in 2017.

[Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com user zimmytws] 

-- By Arundhati Parmar, Senior Editor, MD+DI
[email protected]